We scored the vice presidential debate and Mike Pence won

Vice presidential candidates Tim Kaine and Mike Pence went head-to-head for the first time at Longwood University in Farmville, Va. To help us through the debate, we enlisted the help of three of our political writers and columnists to act as judges. Each judge scored every round with a win, lose or draw and declared Pence the winner at the end. Head to Trail Guide for more updates and check out the most important exchanges from the debate through the transcript.

Debate scorecard

We're dividing the 90-minute debate into three 30-minute rounds. Check the scoreboard during the debate to see what our judges thought of the candidates' performances.

Key: Pence wins the round Kaine wins the round Tie

Key: Pence wins the round Kaine wins the round Tie

Winner: PENCE

Mark Z. Barabak

Political reporter

Cathleen Decker

Political analyst and columnist

Doyle McManus

Political columnist

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Overall winner

Round 1

Mark Z. Barabak

Cathleen Decker

Doyle McManus

What the judges thought:

Barabak: Republican Mike Pence entered the vice presidential debate with the unhappy job of a man pushing a broom after the elephant parade has passed. Yes, Hillary Clinton has done and said things that put her running mate, Democrat Tim Kaine, on the defensive. But there is no question that Donald Trump – with his unpaid taxes, body-shaming crusade and loose-cannon rhetoric – presented Pence with the much bigger clean-up job. His strategy? Ignore Kaine's attacks on Trump and stick to talking points blasting Clinton, President Obama and tsk-ing Kaine for his repeated interruptions. Pence repeatedly bobbed and weaved. But he was calm and collected. Style points – and style matters a great deal on the debate stage – wins Indiana Gov. Pence the round over an over-caffeinated performance by Virginia's Sen. Kaine.

Decker: The vice presidential candidates were supposed to be the nice guys on the tickets, but they’ve already proven that they can be as ticky-tacky, interrupting and annoying as most other candidates on any debate stage. Kaine seemed too hyper, at least in this early stage, persistently interrupting in a way that didn’t necessarily benefit his ticket. Pence showed Donald Trump what he was supposed to do in his own debate last week – offer concise points about the GOP’s plans and lance both Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine repeatedly with his sad-eyed, aw-shucks mien.

McManus: Mike Pence is delivering the debate performance Donald Trump needed a week ago: Focusing on whether voters want change or more of the same. Tim Kaine came out as a prototypical attack dog, a role that doesn’t suit him especially well. Paradoxically, though, it was Pence who got under Kaine’s skin, baiting him to defend the Obama economic record. (Or, as Pence would put it, the Obama-Clinton economic record.) “Fifteen million new jobs,” Kaine said. “People in Scranton” – in the swing state of Pennsylvania – “know different,” Pence said. Round goes to Pence.

Round 2

Mark Z. Barabak

Cathleen Decker

Doyle McManus

What the judges thought:

Barabak: An actual substantive discussion on policing, race and bias suggests what a thoughtful adult political conversation looks like. It quickly devolved from there into a back-and-forth over whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump has hurled more insults over the course of the campaign. Ignoring the empirical evidence, Pence continued to deflect Kaine’s rat-a-tat attacks with a show of furrow-browed Hoosier earnestness. His approach: either ignore or deny things that Trump has said, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. Substance aside — and as much as he sometimes strained credulity – Pence once more edged Kaine with his sober presidential mien. There’s a reason it’s called a debate performance. Substance matters. But style matters more.

Decker: If Tim Kaine’s interruptions were the most annoying of the first round, Mike Pence’s were the most annoying of the second. Kaine did better in this round with concise indictments of Donald Trump’s insults and of his immigration plan. Pence parried well and has mastered the art of denying Kaine’s accurate statements about Trump’s positions. Oh, and this segment ends with Pence's patented description of Trump as “broad-shouldered” -- a gender reference he has used throughout the campaign. He also pushed the boundaries of logic by reacting with surprise to the notion that Trump’s campaign could be described as “insult-driven.”

Round 3

Mark Z. Barabak

Cathleen Decker

Doyle McManus

What the judges thought:

Barabak: Kaine came out strong, a bit too strong, and settled as the evening wore on. Pence stayed on an even keel throughout, even if he consistently failed to defend his running mate. In most instances, he barely tried. One exchange was particularly telling. When Kaine demanded, for the umpteenth time, that Trump release his taxes, Pence parried, “What does this have to do with Russia?” — the putative topic at hand. It was a neat verbal sleight of hand that was reflective of how, throughout the debate, Pence managed to divert attention, including with statements that were weak — “Do you not take deductions?” he demanded when Kaine mentioned Trump’s nearly $1-billion tax write-off — or provably false. The fact-checkers can crawl all over Pence. He passed the temperament test — and more than a few Republicans are probably wishing he was the one atop the GOP ticket. For his part, Kaine had his best moment of the evening addressing with plain-spoken thoughtfulness the squaring of his personal religious faith with his duties in public life. It was a glimpse of the Tim Kaine his fans know and love. The round was a draw.

Decker: The most illuminating section of the entire debate came near the end, when the candidates were asked to discuss a time when their faith had conflicted with their responsibilities. Out from a morass of bickering came two thoughtful answers, which drove the men in different directions, but at the very least told America something about each of them. It’s a shame the rest of the debate descended into a haze of interruptions.

McManus: On Syria and Russia, Pence wandered way off the Trump reservation, calling for a U.S.-guaranteed safe zone in Syria (and possible U.S. airstrikes against the Syrian army) and denouncing Vladimir Putin as a threat to the West. Those positions both break with Trump's — but they’re squarely in the GOP mainstream, leading plenty of pundits to wonder whether Pence is running for the 2020 nomination already. Kaine continued trying to hang all of Trump’s intemperate comments around Pence’s neck; Pence continued to pretend Trump never said them. In an interesting close, both candidates talked of religious faith — with Kaine reminding viewers (if any were left) that Pence has long called for overturning Roe vs. Wade. On style, the round went to Pence; on substance, to Kaine.

Final thoughts

Mark Z. Barabak

Cathleen Decker

Doyle McManus

What the judges thought:

Barabak: Mike Pence had a daunting task, had he chosen to undertake it: Defend the myriad and many ways his running mate, Donald Trump, has offended all manner of Americans. He hardly bothered. Instead, he delivered a mix of conservative orthodoxy and there-you-go-again rejoinders with a coolness and polish that Ronald Reagan himself might have admired. Tim Kaine played the traditional role of vice presidential attack dog in a way that seemed both canned and, at times, overly exuberant. If the facts were more often on the Democrat’s side, his GOP rival did the better job of seeming convincing and, on that basis, was the winner of the debate. That noted, it's not as though anything said or done Tuesday night in Farmville, Va., will affect the outcome Nov. 8. The singular moment in vice presidential debate history came in 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen chopped Dan Quayle off at the knees with his withering "You're no Jack Kennedy" putdown. Just about a month later, Republican Quayle and his running mate, George H.W. Bush, walloped Bentsen and the man atop the Democratic ticket, Michael Dukakis, in an Electoral College landslide.

Decker: What viewers got out of this debate depends largely on their point of view. Those seeking to understand what kind of president Democrats think Trump would be got an earful from Tim Kaine; those seeking to know what Republicans fear about Hillary Clinton heard that from Mike Pence. Stylistically, Pence was a better debater: He came across as cool and measured. If you’re a stickler for truth, however, you might have objected to the fact that he repeatedly denied things that Trump has said or done, as though by force of personality he could erase Trump’s insults. (He denied, for example, that Trump had said women who have abortions should be punished. Trump did say that, in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.) Kaine had some strong points as well, repeatedly asking why Pence wasn’t defending Donald Trump. (And he wasn’t.) In the end, a narrow Pence victory, but one that will not matter in the grand scheme of a race in which they have been overshadowed. After tonight, they’re about to be overshadowed again, beginning with Sunday’s second presidential debate.

McManus: Pence won this debate narrowly — but on style more than substance. He summoned his easy, avuncular manner as a former radio host to deliver tough lines with an aw-shucks touch. When he couldn’t defend something Donald Trump had said, he either ignored it or pretended Trump had never said it. Unlike Trump, he remembered that his ticket’s strongest pitch is change (versus “more of the same”) and repeated it as often as he could. He probably didn’t win many converts for Trump, but he helped establish his own credentials as a potential presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024. Kaine won more points on substance, because he focused on hammering at Trump’s many weak points — from deriding Mexican immigrants to expressing unconcern over nuclear proliferation. He may have damaged his own standing as a nice guy; but in the heat of a presidential campaign, the prevailing precept is that nice guys never win. In short: a narrow decision that leaves both vice presidential candidates a little battered — and the race exactly where it was, with Clinton ahead but a critical second debate ahead.

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Credits: Illustrations by David Horsey. Design and development by Priya Krishnakumar.